They all laugh. We all laugh. And it occurs to me that I might be meeting Tobias's true faction. They are not characterized by a particular virtue. They claim all colors, all activities, all virtues, and all flaws as their own.

She taught me all about real sacrifice. That it should be done from love... That it should be done from necessity, not without exhausting all other options. That it should be done for people who need your strength because they don't have enough of their own.

I open the door to the fear landscape room and flip open the small black box that was in my back pocket to see the syringes inside. This is the box I have always used, padded around the needles; it is a sign of something sick inside me, or something brave.

She is well practiced in the art of losing herself.

Don't you dare try to apologize." His voice shakes. "This is not something you can bandage with a word or two and some hugging, or something.

What do you think they're going to do to us when they find us guilty?" she says after a few minutes of silence have passed. "Honestly?" "Does now seem like the time for honesty?" I look at her from the corner of my eye. "I think they're going to force us to eat lots of cake and then take an unreasonably long nap.

I know some things--I know that I'm not alone, that I have friends, that I'm in love. I know that I don't want to die, and for me that's something--more than I could have said a few weeks ago.